


Symbiosis

by MrRhapsodist



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Drinking & Talking, Female Friendship, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghosts, Gen, Jedi Training, Philosophy, Seduction to the Dark Side, Taris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 08:42:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15191042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrRhapsodist/pseuds/MrRhapsodist
Summary: Sometimes, the best way to greater power starts with a helping hand and a drink in a cantina.A slight reimagining of how the female Sith Inquisitor and Ashara Zavros first join forces on Taris.





	Symbiosis

**Author's Note:**

> I've been playing SWTOR nonstop and loving it. And I love nothing more than the Female Sith Inquisitor's whole relationship with Ashara. I wrote this in a flurry late one night, and now I want to share it with other fans.

With an upraised hand, violet energy spat forth across the air. From a Sith Lord’s flesh and bone, dark currents of power swirled. Across the ruined temple floor, the shimmering aura of a Force ghost in Jedi robes screamed.

Fidelia Marr stood her ground against the ghost’s resistance. She poured every ounce of malice and determination into finding the ghost’s anchor. In the Force, that nexus of energy sang to her with the volume of a hundred-person choir. She couldn’t ignore it if she tried. But try as she might, Fidelia couldn’t _break_ the source. One sever, one whisper of her will through the Force, and it’d be over. This blasted ghost could return to whatever oblivion it called home, and she could absorb the remnants of its power into herself.

But the ghost refused to break.

Even in death, the elder Zavros was a nuisance.

Behind her, Fidelia felt a twitch of motion. She relented against the ghost, only to see a red hand fall on her shoulder. That hand, so lithe and warm, seemed as heavy as a boulder. But when she followed the hand to its owner, Fidelia’s lips quirked into a smile.

“Let me help,” Ashara Zavros insisted. Her mouth set into a grim line. Amidst the crackling energy of dark and light auras, the Togruta’s facial patterns and head-tails shimmered with a light of their own. Fidelia knew that light all too well. A simple light. That peace of innocence that the universe found all too easy to snuff out at a moment’s notice.

 _Do it,_ a voice whispered inside Fidelia’s mind. Out from a dark crypt buried in her gray tissue, that same old, sneering voice called out, _Break the girl. Bind her power to yours._

The worst thing was, she knew she could. Turn her hand, with its swirling Force energies, and point at the girl. A twist of her will from the ghost to Ashara, and the girl would break in the same amount of time. No resistance. No chance to see it coming. She’d break, and Fidelia would have a puppet. A broken Jedi, slaved to her will alone.

But something stayed Fidelia’s desire.

It was the Togruta’s hand on her shoulder.

She would’ve batted it away, were it anyone else. As if anyone could be so impertinent as to lay hands on a Sith Lord, let alone the flesh-and-blood heir to Lord Kallig himself. But not this one. No, this girl— _whose name is Ashara,_ Fidelia reminded herself—would not be broken.

She would be invited. She would get an offer. Something Fidelia had never gotten herself.

With newfound determination, Fidelia turned her attention back to the ghost. Back to its ancient Jedi robes, and to its now-familiar facial patterns and head-tails. The ghost of a male Togruta Jedi Knight, a man of stern visage and pride to rival any Dark Lord of the Sith.

He lifted both hands in defiance, waving them through the air to conjure up whatever meager link to the light side he still possessed in the afterlife. But this was not the first ghost Fidelia Marr had encountered. Nor, she suspected, would it be the last. In her veins, the ritual of Lord Ergast turned her hot blood into an icy torrent, one that formed a new anchor for the spirit. A new conduit for the ghost’s strength. Every passing second became an eternity, as Fidelia felt her life essence fade little by little. Walking that dangerous line between life and death, between the Force and oblivion.

But in the growing darkness, as the ghost’s screams began to recede, all she needed to feel was the warm red hand of a Togruta on her shoulder.

That light was _her_ anchor to the living.

Fidelia smiled to herself.

With a final twist of her will, she snapped the anchor in half.

With a final cry, the spirit of Kalatosh Zavros faded into a column of smoke and dust. And soon, not even that remained.

At long last, the Jedi Enclave fell silent again.

Fidelia let out a laugh. Around her hand, the dark violet energies that had crackled to life now dissipated. Her veins lost that supernatural chill. Her skin no longer felt tight and stretched to the point of breaking. All the shadows of the netherworld that the ghost had tried to drown her in were gone as well.

Fidelia laughed again. And again. She kept on laughing until she collapsed to her hands and knees on the rocky temple floor.

“Hey, are you all right?” Ashara’s question came not a moment too soon. Soft red hands reached for Fidelia’s shoulders, guiding her back. A protest to _let go already_ died on her lips, and she regarded the young Padawan with a gentle smile.

“Never better,” she lied.

Ashara’s brow knitted. “I... I figured you knew what you were doing, but...” She shook her head, and as she did, her delicate head-tails quivered against her shoulders. “I never knew power like that was even _possible._ ”

 _Me neither,_ Fidelia wanted to say. But she kept it to herself. Better to let the girl—to let _Ashara_ —enjoy some small sense of mystery about the Sith.

The Togruta was so _close,_ though. It would take less than a thought to summon her lightsaber to her hand and strike down the girl. One less Jedi in the universe. One less distraction. With all the work Thanaton and his minions were doing at the capital, Fidelia couldn’t afford to waste time.

She stayed her hand. With Ashara’s help, she rose to her feet again and surveyed the scorched part of the floor where Kalatosh’s ghost had met its grisly end. And as she stared, Fidelia sensed a new swirl of light within the cauldron of spirits she’d already conquered and bound to herself. A flutter of bitter, broken pride and loathing that was the shadow of the old Togruta Jedi, sealed to her spirit by blood, consecrated to her pact with the dark side.

That newfound power still recognized Ashara as part of its bloodline. Fidelia saw no reason to disregard the sentiment.

She turned to the Togruta, and she kept up a smile of gratitude. “Your timing, my dear, is impeccable. But I doubt your ancestor would ever forgive you for it.”

Ashara blinked. “What choice did I have? He was a danger to everyone. Himself included.”

“Quite.” Fidelia was about to add more, but she heard the rush of footsteps coming from the hall outside the ruined temple atrium. Turning with Ashara, she heard the familiar _snap-hiss_ of a lightsaber being ignited. Ashara went for her twin lightsabers at her belt, drawing both and unleashing sky blue blades in a defensive crisscross.

Fidelia, however, kept her hands empty. She clasped them behind her back and waited.

When the Jedi Masters came barging in, she kept up her smile.

She was _so_ going to enjoy this.

* * *

Moments later, two Jedi Masters lay on the broken temple floor. Fidelia considered it a mercy that the hoods of their robes were draped over their faces as they fell. No chance for her or Ashara to linger on the horrified expressions they still wore. The last thing she wanted was to give the Togruta second thoughts about joining her cause.

As they caught a shuttle back to the Imperial command center on Taris, overtaking the toxic woods and ponds that the Republic had tried to reclaim, Fidelia stared at her hands. She marveled at the potential she felt within them. Not only for the katas she’d studied in lightsaber dueling and blaster deflection, but for the esoteric techniques she’d mastered since her time on Korriban. Secrets of the netherworld. Force-walking and binding ghosts. Ergast’s poison still swam inside her skin and drifted in her blood. He’d promised her as much when she drank it. As she looked through the shuttle’s viewport at the toxic pools of water below, Fidelia imagined her own innards resembled them now.

Taris, it seemed, was not the only thing a Sith Lord had blighted by his mere presence. It was practically the story of her life.

Sitting beside her in the passenger compartment, Ashara had kept quiet on the whole trip. Every so often, Fidelia caught sight of the girl’s lips moving silently. If she attuned her hearing, she could almost make out a few lines of the ever-rigid Jedi Code. _There is no emotion, there is peace,_ the girl would whisper to herself. _There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no emotion, there is peace. No emotion, there must be peace..._

Back at the enclave, after they’d struck down Masters Ryen and Ocera in self-defense, Fidelia had asked Ashara if she wanted to stay. There’d been no deception in the question. She hadn’t planned on stabbing the girl with her lightsaber, or casting Force lightning in her face when she hesitated. So when the Togruta stood there, so awkward in Padawan’s robes that didn’t quite fit her adult frame, Fidelia felt something she knew she was supposed to have stamped out long ago. An old feeling that Korriban and Dromund Kaas had burned away.

She felt _sorry_ for the girl.

A ridiculous notion, she knew. Not to be trusted either. It was one thing to desire someone, like she’d done with Andronikos Revel. It was another thing to envy someone for their status, as she’d done with Zash or even Thanatos. Desire and envy were natural in any thinking creature. Even a wild beast could manage them.

But looking at this would-be Jedi Knight, with her world falling apart and her masters betraying her over their wounded sense of self-righteousness, Fidelia felt like she was looking back in time at a girl she once knew.

She saw a girl who’d scrubbed her master’s dining room floors and shared his silky bed sheets at night. She recognized the girl who’d dreamt of running off to the stars someday. And she saw the slave who’d cried in relief when she found the power of the dark side that let her squeeze the life from her master’s throat. All that hatred and horror had mingled together, and even now, with Force ghosts secured by her leash, Fidelia Marr understood that she could not let this Togruta girl go running off in tears the same way.

Instead, she’d offered her hand and a place on her ship, the _Kissai._

It wasn’t until the shuttle landed at the spaceport, safe behind the Imperial defensive line, that Ashara finally stirred. Fidelia stood and glanced down at her Togruta friend.

“Last chance to back out,” she said. Pointing toward the exit hatch, she added, “I wouldn’t blame you, you know. Freedom’s right there. Probably find yourself a pilot in the cantina, or someone who’ll let you work for safe passage offworld.”

Ashara’s brows knitted together. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I—” The words came up short in her throat.

 _Because I care,_ she almost said.

Wiping her hand along her face, Fidelia brushed a finger against the steel lining of her ocular and chin implants. Cold prostheses to replace the flesh and organs she’d lost from her escape from slavery. All those stolen credits that’d paid for a new face, and for enhanced strength. Credits that had gotten her a shuttle ride to the Korriban Academy, where she’d gotten her first taste for the power of the Sith.

How long had it been since then? Months, certainly. Well over a year and a half, she guessed. Every day seemed to blend into another after all the missions. She'd started counting time by the number of planets she visited.

Breathing out, Fidelia found her center again. She smiled at Ashara and said, “Because I think your potential is wasted on the same boring lightsaber drills in a ruined temple.”

A slight laugh escaped Ashara’s lips. She stood, and when she approached Fidelia, her whole face became a cold, suspicious mask.

“You know,” she whispered, “you’ll see those skills firsthand if you try to corrupt me.”

Fidelia grinned. “Good. I do _so_ love a challenge.” With a tilt of her hand, she stepped aside and gestured to the still-closed exit hatch. “Shall we go, then?”

The air between them crackled with tension. For a split second, Fidelia saw a vision of the future. Her hand going for the lightsaber, blocking Ashara’s one-two strike. Both their blades letting off a flurry of sparks and burnt ozone as they tore apart the small shuttle compartment, screaming murder at each other as they clashed. One side of the Force against the other, as they tore apart the entire spaceport in their fury.

But the battle never came. Ashara let out a shy, precious smile, and then she proceeded ahead of Fidelia through the main hatch.

The Force sang a note of joy as Fidelia followed her outside. That feeling left her shaken.

She clasped her hands together behind her back.

 _Get a grip, child,_ that dark voice from the crypt whispered again. _Who’s mastered who, eh?_

 _Shut up,_ Fidelia retorted. _You’re as bad a guest as you were a Lord of the Sith._

The ghost she’d bound had no response. Fidelia felt Darth Andru’s restless spirit drift within her core, and she fought against the urge to shiver. To let him know he had an effect. She was a Sith in body, mind, and spirit. Not some decrepit temple in the jungles of a conquered planet. Andru could protest and tease her as he liked, but only through her did he even _have_ the power to still affect the living.

Meanwhile, Ashara looked around the spaceport. She froze as two troopers in full armor, with the Emperor’s insignia stamped on their shoulder plates, came marching past her. And behind them, a lord in majestic armored robes, sporting the red skin and tendrils of a Sith pureblood. He cast a yellow-eyed glance Ashara’s way, and she stiffened, but then the lord chuckled to himself. He nodded as if to say hello, and then he followed his soldiers to the nearby orbital shuttle.

Everywhere Fidelia looked, all she saw was the normal activity of an Imperial garrison. But she had to remind herself that this was Ashara’s first view of life in the Empire.

All she saw were people she thought of as _the enemy._

Fidelia tapped the Togruta’s shoulder. Ashara yelped, and she spun around, but when she caught sight of the Sith Lord, her face went from a heated orange to a shade of lavender. What she assumed must pass for a blush on Togruta skin.

“You,” Fidelia said with a tone that brooked no argument, “could certainly use a drink. And, you know, I do _so_ hate to drink alone.”

* * *

In the spaceport cantina, surrounded by officers in uniform and alien crewmates playing sabacc, Fidelia had managed to wrangle from the bartender one merciful spot away from the clamor. A small booth, tucked away behind a pair of tall, leafy plants in their clay pots. She didn’t want to consider if the clay in those pots had come from Taris’s soil. And when she saw the pores in those pots, Fidelia decided that she didn’t _want_ to know either.

In any case, she could still sit and enjoy the jukebox playing something fresh off the HoloNet Trending Charts. She had a Corellian wine in one hand, and her arm around sweet Ashara’s shoulders on the couch.

The Togruta, meanwhile, sat and took nervous sips of her ale. Her walls had begun to slide back into place, even with the relaxed atmosphere of the cantina to enjoy.

Fidelia would have to work on that.

“Do you know what the dark side is?” she asked. “I mean, have your masters told you how the Jedi first became aware of it?”

“Temptation,” Ashara said. Well, more like spat out. “There was a schism over how to use the Force, and on Tython—”

“Yes, yes, we know all that.” Fidelia pressed her lips together. She took another sip of her wine, and then she set down her glass on a small side table. “But what about the first _act_ of the dark side? Do you know what it was?”

Ashara shook her head.

Fidelia smiled. As she did, her hand squeezed Ashara’s shoulder.

“The Force, both light and dark, _reveals_ itself to those who can sense it,” she explained. “That’s all. It communicates secrets about the nature of reality to minds too small to comprehend most of them. So we don’t sit like scientists or philosophers, quantifying everything. We rely on our intuition. We _feel_ the Force. And when we feel it strongly, we can add our will to _its_ will. Our thoughts join with its aura. Two energy fields converge, and they become something greater. One kind of energy lets us heal a fractured bone. Another turns hatred and malice into an engine of war. But neither form of energy gets lost. So the Force flows out like water through our fingers. All we _can_ do is provide channels for where the magic goes, be it light or dark.”

As she spoke, Fidelia felt something shift inside her. Even she hadn’t expected to say all that. Some of it she’d borrowed from a treatise she’d read by Darth Vilius, and some of it was her own take on Sorzus Syn’s _A Study of Sith Alchemy._ Looking at Ashara, though, she knew that her words had had an effect. That light of awe sparkling in her eyes. That precious smile again. That sense of wonder.

Maybe she _was_ going soft, like Andru had accused. But so what?

She wanted to see that in Ashara. She wanted to remember that hope and dread from her youth, if only to sharpen her own appetite for Thanaton’s seat.

“ _Ashla_ and _Bogan,_ ” Fidelia said quietly, still smiling to herself. “Two moons over Tython, their names now transformed into the fundamental aspects of the Force. But if not for those moons, if not for the first Jedi’s exploration of both aspects, how would we know the Force for what it was? We’d still be calling it magic and worshipping wizard-kings on some backwater rock.”

Truth be told, there were days when Fidelia was convinced the whole Sith Empire was sliding in that direction. If not for the Emperor’s authority, she’d see the whole Dark Council as nothing but a band of old, frightened men, all wagging their tongues in some new squabble on the direction of the war and whose family bloodline had earned more prestige. Fidelia would be doing the galaxy a favor ridding it of their ilk, and yet she needed to join their ranks. To prove herself in their eyes. To serve the Emperor with her knowledge.

That was the goal, wasn’t it? Ever since she first set foot on the harsh desert of Korriban.

“The Jedi and Sith Codes matter, but for different reasons,” she finally said. “It depends on what you need their wisdom for, isn’t it? To either secure the peace, or to win in a battle of wills.”

“I suppose I can’t argue with that,” Ashara replied. She took another fearful sip of her drink. Then she smacked her lips and added, “Mm. This _is_ good.”

“Told you so.” Fidelia laughed, and she squeezed the girl’s shoulder again. “I’ll be sure to stock more of it on the ship from now on.”

She was about to say more when her holocomm beeped for attention. Answering it, Fidelia beamed at the tiny holo of Andronikos Revel, his face obscured by his cowl. The former pirate leaned into view, no doubt scuffing up her cockpit console with his unwashed tunic sleeves. His tired, scarred face still carried a twinge of that cocky young man’s flair that made her grow hot under the collar—and in other places as well.

“ _Hey, Lady Marr,_ ” he chimed in. “ _We’re ready when you are._ ”

“Thank you, dearest.” Fidelia tilted her holocomm pad a few degrees to the right, even as she tugged Ashara into view. “Make sure we’ve got room for one more, won’t you?”

“ _Heh._ ” Revel gave Ashara a look over. “ _Yeah, sure. Whatever you say, boss._ ”

“And don’t you forget it, you old pirate.”

“ _Old pirate?_ ” Revel laughed, as static rippled through the hologram. “ _I’ll be dead before I’m an old man, and you know it._ ”

“I do.” Fidelia blew him a kiss. “See you soon.”

When the call cut out, she turned back to Ashara. The Togruta had stayed silent, but her face said everything. All those tiny lavender blushes that Fidelia was beginning to recognize. Those patches of color made the girl’s face all the more precious, and she thanked the Force for whatever accidental combination of genes and personalities had led to this exact person. Because, even with her claim to Revel’s fortunes and good looks, Fidelia knew that Ashara wasn’t all _that_ perfect if she could still have a slight crush on a man more than twice her age. To say nothing of the fact that he was still a bloody vicious pirate.

“Come on,” Fidelia said, pulling Ashara close. “I’ve got a fast ship and a whole galaxy to introduce you to, my dear. Let’s not keep them waiting, all right?”

“Whatever you say.” Ashara, to her surprise, leaned into the embrace a little more. Her head-tail flopped onto Fidelia’s shoulder, almost as if it belonged there. “I think I’ll be happy just getting off this miserable excuse for a planet.”

“You and me _both._ ” Fidelia tried to stand, but Ashara caught her from landing back on the couch. “Oh, _my._ A bit too much wine, perhaps?”

“Yeah, must be,” Ashara agreed with a laugh.

They were still leaning into each other, half-giddy on liquor and battle fatigue that they almost missed the elevator to Fidelia’s private hangar. They were still close to each other and sharing quick smiles even as the _Fury-_ class interceptor closed its ramp, pulled up its landing struts, and began the great long rising arc into the skies above Taris. All those beautiful, horrid toxic pools and foggy mountains reflected on the gleaming hull of the _Kissai,_ Fidelia’s beauty of a ship. With Revel at the controls, she could outfly any Republic cruiser or Jedi transport. At a touch of the hyperdrive lever, the _Kissai_ could hit oh point two past lightspeed.

Just let them try and come for Ashara. They’d find a Sith Lord with a double-bladed saber and a grim refusal to let such a pure soul leave. When even ghosts didn’t dare to fight her off, why would the living even bother?

Such were Fidelia’s thoughts, sitting at the commander’s chair on the bridge, as the stars stretched into long white lines across hyperspace.

Once more into the void. Once more into the unknown, where lost treasures abounded.


End file.
